Preview

Preview

Saturday 26 January 2008 18.41 EST
First published on Saturday 26 January 2008 18.41 EST

Speed-The-Plow, London

There will be a touch of deja vu at the Old Vic this week when artistic director Kevin Spacey appears in David Mamet's Speed-The-Plow. He plays Charlie Fox, a Hollywood producer, in this satire of Tinseltown machinations, just as the stage version of the 1994 film Swimming With Sharks - in which Christian Slater starred as Buddy Ackerman, a Hollywood producer of dodgy but profitable blockbusters - has departed the West End. Film fans may remember that that particular role was played in the original movie by one Kevin Spacey. Another tale of LA greed, lust and backstabbing, Mamet's 1988 three-hander is a rather sharper piece, though, in which Fox faces up against Bobby Gould (Jeff Goldblum as a Hollywood producer of dodgy but profitable blockbusters) in a debate of art versus money. In Matthew Warchus's staging, former Mary Poppins Laura Michelle Kelly takes on the role played by Madonna on Broadway.Mark Cook

· Old Vic, SE1, Fri 1 to Apr 26

A Prayer For My Daughter, London

What makes a hero is the main theme of Thomas Babe's 1997 US play A Prayer For My Daughter, a thriller first staged in the UK in 1978 at the Royal Court. As two New York police officers interrogate two men suspected of murdering an old woman, background and motivation are unravelled and explored, as are the blurred boundaries of right and wrong. Crucial, too, is the shadow of the Vietnam war, as one of the policemen is a vet who cannot deal with losing a war and being rejected by his country, and the fact that the four men each have a daughter. Dominic Hill directs. MC

· Young Vic, SE1, Thu 31 to Mar 15

Rafta Rafta, Birmingham

Giving old northern chestnuts a British Asian makeover is pretty fashionable in the theatre. In Rafta Rafta, Ayub Khan-Din takes Bill Naughton's 1961 working-class, northern comedy and updates it to the heart of the 21st-century British Indian community. The premise remains the difficulties of beginning married life when you live with mum and dad, and Nicholas Hytner's staging should be greeted warmly for its humour and cross-cultural appeal. Lyn Gardner

· Birmingham Rep, Thu 31 to Feb 16

War And Peace, Nottingham

Back in the mid-90s, then artistic director Richard Eyre invited Shared Experience's Polly Teale and Nancy Meckler to the National to discuss them mounting a project for the theatre. He listened to them, but didn't bite until, more in desperation than with any real intent, Teale said, "Well, we could always do War And Peace." So they did it, cramming all 1,443 pages of Leo Tolstoy's epic saga about the Napoleonic wars into around four and a half hours. Now they are presenting an expanded version of that staging, using a cast of 15 to play 72 roles and which can be seen in two parts or over a single day. Written by Helen Edmundson, the production should be considerably more than Tolstoy's greatest hits and will give Meckler and Teale ample chance to demonstrate the prowess at expressive visual theatre that served them so well in shows such as Jane Eyre. LG

· Nottingham Playhouse, Fri 1 to Feb 17

The Crucible, Bolton

Arthur Miller was the conscience of America and no more so than in The Crucible. Inspired by the real events in the village of Salem and the subsequent witch trials in 1662, The Crucible used history to point up the perils of McCarthy's anti-communist "witch hunts" of the 1950s. Miller clearly saw what he described as... "one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history" in danger of repeating itself in the paranoid, cold war climate of postwar America. But he does so by telling a yarn of fear, accusations and mounting hysteria. The Octagon has already had Miller successes with revivals of some of the playwright's best plays, including Death Of A Salesman, and Mark Babych's latest production will complete the cycle. LG

· Octagon, Thu 31 to Mar 1

3 Sisters On Hope Street, Liverpool

It's a big 12 months for the Playhouse and Everyman as they play their part in Liverpool's year as city of culture. Quite a lot of the big stuff - including Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear and Phil Willmott's new musical, Once Upon A Time At The Adelphi - falls into the later part of the year, but it begins with a very good idea: the relocation of Chekhov's Three Sisters from provincial 19th-century Russia to postwar Liverpool. Here on Hope Street, Jewish sisters Gertie, May and Rita live in faded grandeur with their asthmatic brother Arnold, in the middle of a city that has been devastated by the war and in a world that is changing fast. Diane Samuels, who wrote Kindertransport, collaborates with Tracy-Ann Oberman in a production by Lindsay Posner that goes to Hampstead after its Liverpool run and which may go further. LG

· Playhouse, to Feb 16

Of All The People In All The World, Penzance

Sometimes it is hard to really understand statistics. Most of us know that there are around 60 million people living in the UK, but what does this really mean. We can easily imagine 600 or maybe 6,000, or even 60,000 people. But even 600,000 is hard to get a grip on. Stan's Café's part theatre show and part art installation uses rice to bring abstract statistics to life. Using a ton of rice, a grain for every person in the UK, the company will create an evolving landscape of labelled rice piles that may focus on statistics from populations of towns and cities to the number of people who are born and die each day. Hugely in demand overseas, this is a show that will make you look at the world differently and reconsider your own place in it. LG

· Exchange Gallery, Thu 31 to Feb 3

Parts For Machines That Do Things, Sheffield

After a big success at Edinburgh this year with Presumption, and with other well-regarded shows such as The Lad-Lit Project regularly on the touring circuit, the Sheffield company Third Angel is worth catching. Its latest piece of devised theatre tackles a subject that affects us all: our trust and reliance on technology. We know that the people who service airplanes or maintain public transport are humanly fallible, but when we are flying at 30,000 feet we never imagine that somebody will have forgotten to replace a tiny but essential piece of metal that keeps it in the air. This might not be a show for those with a fear of flying or any kind of technophobia, but it should be an intriguing evening and, if we're lucky, will answer why, when the car is broken, it stays broken no matter how hard you kick it, but when the computer is broken, it often seems to mend itself if you let it have a little rest. LG